Maybe Kevyn Orr is a worker of miracles, or the reincarnation of Harry Houdini.

But if I’m correct in assuming that Orr is neither a saint nor a master magician, the inescapable conclusion is that Detroit’s emergency manager will soon petition to put Detroit into Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

That’s not a happy thing, being the largest U.S. municipality ever to declare itself legally destitute.

It’s not an altogether bad thing, either. The end of this road will be the beginning of another.

So let’s get on with it.

Orr, in his first three months as Detroit’s state-appointed EM, has been an earnest teller of unvarnished truths. He has painted a stark picture of how Detroit could avoid bankruptcy if its citizens, creditors, employees and retirees all make painful sacrifices in return for a fresh start and improved city services.

But with every nuisance lawsuit challenging Orr’s authority or his decisions, with every squeal from an aggrieved bondholder or labor union chief, with every cry of “Why me?” from a bewildered Detroit retiree, the chance of avoiding Chapter 9 gets more remote.

Orr expressed some frustration Monday with the sniping and slow pace of negotiations.

“I don’t really see the value in spending a whole lot of time going back and forth. The situation is dire,” he said.

Kenneth Buckfire, the restructuring guru whose New York firm Miller Buckfire was hired last year by Mayor Dave Bing to head a strategic overhaul of Detroit’s finances and operations, was numbingly blunt in an interview Wednesday with the Free Press about the grim choices facing the city’s retirees, labor unions and bondholders.

“What we’re really saying to the creditors is, you were unfortunately invested in a Madoff scheme,” Buckfire said, referring to infamous New York swindler Bernie Madoff, convicted in 2009 of defrauding investors of $18 billion in an elaborate Ponzi scheme.

“The City of Detroit made promises they could never pay,” Buckfire added, noting that unsecured creditors might get nothing and others face significant cuts. The message is, “We can’t pay you. Here’s the best we can do, and here’s what’s best for everybody. So it’s rough justice,” he said.

Detroit’s fiscal dilemma is more than a cautionary tale of what might happen to other cities wrestling with fallout from the Great Recession. Orr and Buckfire have concluded that Detroit’s extraordinary mess is in a class of its own.

“I think Detroit is totally unique,” Buckfire said. “It doesn’t set a precedent for anybody else. You’re talking about a city which has been hammered by two incredibly major trends. One is the decline of its core manufacturing base, which we all know about. Second, is the sheer political mismanagement ...

“Maybe you could have survived one; you can’t survive both,” he added. “So how is any other city in America like that? Even though there are cities that lost their manufacturing base like Pittsburgh, even Dayton, they didn’t have this kind of problem because they were well run politically.”

As various holders and insurers of Detroit bonds whine and try to elbow their way to the front of the line for whatever pennies are left in Detroit’s depleted coffers, it’s clear that some are still in denial that the city is busted.

Detroit has been broke for a decade or more, paying some bills by borrowing more and more money as city officials allowed streetlights, cop cars, ambulances and computers systems to fall apart. When astute lenders wised up and declared Detroit too risky, loopy financing instruments — like the $1.5-billion “certificates of participation” issued in 2005 to paper over a big hole in pension funding — were concocted.

Now it’s game over.

Detroit’s debt is toxic.

The city can’t raise taxes. It’s already at the statutory state maximum on a millage basis — and even if legislators took the unlikely step of approving an exception, why would Detroit give its beleaguered citizenry another reason to leave town?

Orr and his team, on June 14, floated their plan to default on some debt payments, seek to negotiate reductions on other obligations and invest the savings to spend $1.25 billion over 10 years on restoring and upgrading city services

The alternative, they believe, is a Detroit death spiral.

“The nonrestructuring scenario,” Buckfire said Wednesday, “would be continued revenue decline, continue to increase the liabilities and no future for the city. You basically liquidate the city, financially.”

Is Chapter 9 bankruptcy a scary thing?

Sure it is, for all concerned. You never know how a judge might rule on the various points of contention.

But it’s no scarier than the relentless exodus and disinvestment that have devastated vast expanses of a once-great city.

If we want the sprouts of job creation and energy emerging in downtown and Midtown to keep growing, the long-festering cancer of Detroit’s fiscal recklessness must be eliminated.

If that takes a painful, embarrassing trip through Chapter 9, let’s get started.